Back in the earlier days of comics, they used to be sold at drug stores and supermarkets. The manner in which they were sold was via a spinner rack, which was a wire-framed display that would spin 360º. Of course this method of comic distribution damaged every comic that it contained, but to a kid, it was heaven.

Saturday, July 09, 2005

An unbelievable early Silver Age collection of 100 high grade DCs from noted CGC forum member and collector Harry Banks will be sold on www.pedigreecomics.com. There will be 10 books listed each night for 10 straight nights, each one being in CGC certified 8.0 or better (mostly better!!). Amazingly, every comic from this group was purchased by Mr. Banks himself from the same luncheonette (Sid's Luncheonette) in Orange, New Jersey and stored away for the past 44 or so years. Many of these copies represent the highest or second highest certified grade according to the CGC census and are truly scarce in even Very Fine. Most have off-white to white pages and all have incredible structure, ink reflectivity and a fresh, unread look (a testament to Mr. Banks' foresight in carefull storing each book since its date of purchase). You will probably never see such a high grade original owner group of early 1960's DCs ever again!!

Thursday, July 07, 2005

One of my favorite comic book gimmicks has always been the use of the checkerboard. This was the black and white artwork at the top of DC comics which was featured on all DC titles from February 1966 – August 1967. Several classic covers have the checkerboard at the top of the cover, covers like Detective #357. The checkerboard appeared the most on Action comics, a total of 20 issues. Three titles started with checkerboard covers on them, including Swing with Scooter, Plastic Man, and Inferior Five. In all, 535 issues carried the innovative design on the cover.

Known as Go-Go Checks, the checkerboard pattern that ran across the top of every issue for a year and a half was not simply a reflection of the era's pop-art movement. Since some newsstand racks displayed comics vertically, revealing only the upper portion of a book, the pattern was intended to make DC's comics stand out and thus, theoretically, increase sales. "What a ridiculous thing," Carmine Infantino declared. "It was the stupidest idea we ever heard because the books were bad in those days and that just showed people right off what not to buy." But Donenfeld disagreed: "I was trying to find a way of making DC Comics pop out on the newsstand. It wasn't a bad idea; it just didn't work the way I wanted it to. It didn't add anything, but I thought it might." In fact, total sales for the entire DC line during this period were at their peak for the 1960s, sales for Batman-related titles increased dramatically, and DC was outselling all of its competitors. The checks were most likely cancelled as a waste of precious cover space, and interestingly, sales did begin to stall about a year later.